Fiction

Oh yeah, and I have acid reflux about four times a day, he says. The shrink doesn't note this down, which he finds disrespectful. The acrobats are doing something choreographed now, swinging in tandem and making shapes with their bodies. The clowns are gone. The illusionist stands underneath, though, waving his arms, as if he is controlling the airborne tumblers. Maybe he is.read »

“I know this one guy. He brought a bowie knife to one of those workshops once,” Felix said. “He didn’t say anything, just plopped the knife down, wham, like that on the table and gave it a little twirl, like he was spinning a bottle, like he was waiting to be kissed. Nobody said anything to him after that.” read »

And maybe this will be enough for Vern to expel me. I won’t graduate. I can stay little longer. How pleased Moms will be by this! She’ll never lose me and I’ll never lose her. Because she’s all I got left of him. She’s all I got left of her. read »

She went there once, when she was a younger woman, a girl really. It shined green, but more like a reflection of the ocean, like the Puget Sound and its seaweed coloring, than any precious stone.read »

I guess you could say—my mother. My mother was a squeezer. It wouldn’t surprise me if someone’s mother whom you know is also a squeezer. Perhaps even your own mother. I’m told it’s pretty common. read »

Hard Case Crime recently turned 50. The independent publishing house dedicated to all things pulp has published over 50 titles since it opened for business in 2005. And what a business for lovers of crime fiction: HCC not only reissues out of print classics by… read »

Los Angeles. The city of (fallen) angels has lured many crime fiction writers over the years, its truths often stranger than fiction. From Hollywood to Echo Park, L.A. is a siren song of corruption, racial tension, drugs, and silicone implants. Perfect grist for a writer’s… read »

WEEK 1 UNRELIABLE NARRATOR Do you want a reliable narrator? An unreliable narrator? If there is any first-person element to your narration, there’s one answer: all people lie to themselves, all people are unreliable. The question is of degree. While extremely unreliable narrators are fascinating… read »

Interviews

An argument can be made that many of the greatest works of American fiction were forged on the hot end of a harpoon, the weapon that made possible the once nation-shaping, but now extinct, whaling industry on New England’s formidable coast. In Sophronia L. (Folded… read »

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking with poet/filmmaker Marc Olmsted (photo left). In our interview we spoke about Marc’s influences, his films, “The Count” and others, as well as filmmaker Kenneth Anger and H.P.Lovecraft. Marc frequently spoke with cohorts William S. Burroughs and Allen… read »

One of my favorite recent reads was Iris Has Free Time, by Iris Smyles. Eclectic, funny, fast-paced and also reflective, there was something on every page I liked and found memorable. I am not alone in my excitement, as many reviewers have chimed in with… read »

It’s the end of the world and Ben H. Winters feels fine. The best-selling author has just released World of Trouble, the final book in his critically-acclaimed Last Policeman trilogy, which documents a young detective’s final days before a giant world-destroying asteroid hits Earth. The… read »

One writer + One focus = One story An occasional look into pivotal moments in writers’ lives. Writing is, in many ways, translating. Author and translator David Unger sees the connection in that both acts require “[t]he transformation of possibly anarchic coded sources to something… read »

Book Reviews

Set twenty years in the past, Stacy Wakefield’s debut novel, The Sunshine Crust Baking Factory (Akashic Books), comes at an opportune time to look back at the heyday of the practice of squatting, both in the US and Europe, and consider what has become of… read »

ODE TO A DYING CITY Vivian Gornick’s elegiac memoir, The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), is a kind of ode to a liberal, intellectual New York that no longer exists – and one she knows she never can or… read »

Per Petterson’s I Refuse (Graywolf Press) is, as the title suggests, a novel concerned with egoism and repression. It is also about suffering, and the two protagonists, Jim and Tommy, suffer similarly for their self-centeredness—they are middle-aged, alone, and miserable. Tommy has a vague career… read »

Money, religion, sex, intrigue: Mario Vargas Llosa delivers all of these in his new novel, The Discreet Hero (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), as befits a Nobel prize-winning author who stated at the beginning of his career that he wants to create “total novels.” Set both… read »

Welcome to Braggsville (William Morrow) is the story of D’aron Little May Davenport, valedictorian of Braggsville (“The City that Love Built in the Heart of Georgia, Population 712”) high school and t UC “Berzerkely” undergrad. Davenport and his three idealistic best friends and Cal classmates… read »